The Widening World of Children’s Literature

A look at the changing shape of children’s literature in English from the 18th to the 20th century. This text, in particular, examines the dialect between enclosure and exposure , control and freedom of both fictional child and child reader, how the balance of these forces has altered over time, and the possible reasons for these changes. It also looks at the representation of the child in the English novel from the 1830s to the 1860s the period preceding the publication of Alice in Wonderland , the first major work of literature for children, and the influence of such representation in later children’s books. Writers as well known as Lewis Carroll, Louisa M. Alcott, Rudyard Kipling and Charlotte Bronte are examined in the course of this work, but this study also considers works which have been (unfairly) neglected till now and which deserve to be better known. This list includes the Marlow series by Antonia Forest, Jane Gardam’s Bilgewater and Henry Handel Richardson’s The Getting of Wisdom .